This article critically examines the development of Robert E. Speer's missiology during its most formative years before World War I. Speer, a Presbyterian mission board administrator from 1891 to 1937, exemplified the American Protestant missionary impulse in virtually all his endeavors. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he played a significant role as a shaper of evangelical Protestantism's consensus about the aims and purposes of foreign missions. He also functioned as one of the most eloquent apologists for the missionary cause as he spoke of the urgency of the task, responded to critics, and grappled with the questions of Christianity and culture.
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